If this follows the usual trajectory, we'll have a sort-of-working implementation of Vulkan 1.0 in OS X 10.13 (although it will kernel panic if you look at it the wrong way).
But maybe Apple's stance on Vulkan is different now due to their own Metal API? Is Apple involved in Vulkan at all?
Apple is a major Vulkan supporter and is on the "Board of Promoters". They went for Metal because they needed and wanted better performance long before Vulkan was going to be released.
My guess is we'll see Vulkan in the next major OSX/iOS release.
PS3 and PS4 both support OpenGL ES via wrapper on top of their low-level proprietary API. Also Nintendo had OpenGL ES support on all their consoles (at least on 3Ds for sure)..
Fwiw, all it takes is an annual fee to be on that list which is insignificantly small for someone like Apple. That's by no means an indication that Apple is a supporter in any meaningful way. They have said nothing about Vulkan in public at any point.
Long before? Didn't they just adopt Metal on Mac OS mid last year? Surely they knew Vulkan is almost done.
I think they just wanted to see if they can push major game developers to adopt Metal for Mac games early on. If they could do that - awesome for them, and they would never have to adopt Vulkan. If they can't, they'll have to adopt Vulkan.
> Didn't they just adopt Metal on Mac OS mid last year? Surely they knew Vulkan is almost done.
Vulkan was announced in December 2014, with no significant commitment.
iOS 8 including Metal was announced mid-2014, and would have been in development for a considerable time before. By the time it was announced for OSX, Vulkan was still anaemic and not showing significant progress.
So it does make sense to keep using Metal for them.
> I think they just wanted to see if they can push major game developers to adopt Metal for Mac games early on. If they could do that - awesome for them, and they would never have to adopt Vulkan.
If that was the plan, it's probably going to fail: The developers of Unity e.g. found Metal, DX12 and Vulkan so similar that they estimate to be able to support all three with minimal development overhead.
Why does everyone misinterpret my comment to mean that I was talking about iOS?
I know Metal was announced for iOS earlier - I was talking about the support for Mac OS X. They had no good reason to adopt it for Mac OS X at that point, if they were planning on adopting Vulkan in the near future anyway. Unless, like I said, they'd prefer to keep Metal over Vulkan, and wanted to give it a head start to see if PC game developers would start adopting it.
> If that was the plan, it's probably going to fail: The developers of Unity e.g. found Metal, DX12 and Vulkan so similar that they estimate to be able to support all three with minimal development overhead.
I'm not sure how you see that as a "failure". If they are so similar that game engine developers will keep Metal around anyway, then we'll see games be built on Metal, not Vulkan, for Mac OS X. How is that a "failure"? It would mean Metal "won".
> They had no good reason to adopt it for Mac OS X at that point
Of course they did: it was already their API of choice on iOS, platform unification alone makes it a damn good idea to adopt it for OSX: iOS is by far their most popular gaming platform, integrating the API back to OSX makes it more likely they'd get more OSX support.
Not to mention a mid-2015 release of Metal-on-OSX means they'd probably been working on it since the Metal-on-iOS release. On top of fragmenting their platforms, waiting for Metal would have meant a year-long delay.
They did have a reason, except it's nowhere good. They don't want to support Vulkan because it increases their lock-in control and puts extra tax on cross platform development. Same reason MS doesn't want to support it on Xbox. It's not a good reason, it's pretty crooked but very Apple like.
Apple isn't usually about "locking people in" but more about controlling the experience. That can lead to the same thing, where they want everyone to use their API and not someone else's, but the difference is whether they have greedy, malicious intent or not. I don't think they do. Having good intentions means they are more likely to surprise you and do something good eventually.
Still, I wouldn't hold my breath on Apple supporting Vulkan soon. Their OpenGL support is usually a few versions behind so if they do ever support Vulkan I would expect it to be late.
> Having good intentions means they are more likely to surprise you and do something good eventually.
I'll agree to that when I'll see it. I.e. if their intentions are good - they'll get behind the Vulkan effort and will add native support for it on their systems. So far they clearly stayed away from it, but surely noted all its ideas to use in their lock-in variant.
Your definition of good and mine clearly differ. As has been noted, Metal existed and shipped before Vulkan, yet you claim they are using all its ideas in their own lock in variant.
Multiple people have mentioned in this thread how engine vendors have abstracted all 3 competing technologies (Metal, DX12, "Vulkan") with minimal effort.
How is there any lock in here? How is it any different from Microsoft or any other vendor deciding to, or not, implement DX12 or Vulkan?
As was noted, it didn't exist before Mantle and before AMD decided to open it. So Apple in fact knew about it all along. Again, you can't try to dismiss their lock-in attitude with the claim that they just needed something and had no alternatives. They simply made the lock-in choice.
> Multiple people have mentioned in this thread how engine vendors have abstracted all 3 competing technologies (Metal, DX12, "Vulkan") with minimal effort.
Indeed, since they share lot's of core ideas (all of them originate in Mantle). The question is not about why one can't abstract them, but why Apple and MS push their lock-in instead of collaborating. And you wouldn't like the answer.
>How is there any lock in here? How is it any different from Microsoft
Who said it's different? It's the same crooked practice. But I'm surprised you don't see the obvious lock-in issue here.
> As was noted, it didn't exist before Mantle and before AMD decided to open it.
I see that claim, I don't see any evidence. The first evidence of Mantle being donated to Khronos date back to early 2015, not early 2014. Mantle was not open-source or open at initial release, and wasn't even supported on all AMD hardware.
> So Apple in fact knew about it all along. Again, you can't try to dismiss their lock-in attitude with the claim that they just needed something and had no alternatives.
Wait, so Apple's proprietary API is bad because AMD's proprietary existed before it? How does that even make sense?
> They simply made the lock-in choice.
Mantle was only available for AMD hardware on Windows, Apple's first need was ARM/PowerVR on iOS…
> The question is not about why one can't abstract them, but why Apple and MS push their lock-in instead of collaborating. And you wouldn't like the answer.
You do realise your pet conspiration theories are only answers to the question "what are your pet conspiration theories" no matter how many time you hint at them, right?
> Long before? Didn't they just adopt Metal on Mac OS mid last year? Surely they knew Vulkan is almost done.
Metal was made available in iOS8, in September 2014, almost 18 months ago. That's pretty long. In fact the first Metal public demo predates the Vulkan private kickoff meeting.
> I think they just wanted to see if they can push major game developers to adopt Metal for Mac games early on.
Mid-2015 they made their iOS graphics API — which had been available for nearly a year at this point — available on OSX. Fact remains that they realised a need for and started working on a lower-overhead API much earlier than Vulkan was conceived let alone released, likely circa 2012~2013 if they were almost done by mid-2014.
vulcan was actually a hastily thrown together proposition in response to the shocking (to OpenGL people) announcement of Metal by Apple. it helped a lot that AMD jumped on board by donating Mantle to Khronos.
Apple was on the X consortium too and did fuckall with it. If you want to be conspiratorial, they could have been there to undermine X so more people would develop for Mac. Draw your own conclusions w.r.t. Vulkan.
Mac decided to go for Metal. That's their choice. I believe they mentioned that they have not plans to support Vulkan at this stage. They are not part of the consortium, while even Microsoft is (despite them having DirectX as direct competitor).
Uh where are you getting that? Vulcan lists them as a promoter while Microsoft is just a member: https://www.khronos.org/members/ (Image at bottom of page)
Metal was first unveiled in early June 2014[0], and thus probably in the works some time before that. AFAIK the "Next Generation OpenGL Initiative" was officially announced at SIGGRAPH 2014, in August 2014[1], and the private kickoff meeting was the month before.
edit: heh, some people really can't handle the truth.
Considering the sorry state of OpenGL on the Mac and the fact that they are throwing resources on Metal, don't expect more involvement other than the board seat.
If this follows the usual trajectory, we'll have a sort-of-working implementation of Vulkan 1.0 in OS X 10.13 (although it will kernel panic if you look at it the wrong way).
But maybe Apple's stance on Vulkan is different now due to their own Metal API? Is Apple involved in Vulkan at all?